The Night Album

Yesterday, When the Future Seemed So Far Away, Bert Cann Captured the Boys at Play: a New DVD of the Beatles' 1964 Film A Hard Day's Night Includes a Bonus Trove of Long-Lost Photos. Suddenly, They're Again the Lads They Used to Be....

THE LATE unit photographer Bert Cann followed the Beatles to a London orphanage, where he snapped Ringo (left), John, Paul and George as they kidded around painting mop-tops on Easter eggs. This one, along with more than 4,000 of Cann's photos from the Hard Day's Night shoot, turned up in 2000 in a closet in the Beverly Hills office of the film's late producer, Walter Shenson, who had stored and forgotten them there decades before.

HIT PARADE Extra Patti Boyd (center) was courted by Paul McCartney (with another unidentified actress) as well as Ringo Starr during the 1964 shoot before setting her sights on future husband George Harrison, whom she would leave for Eric Clapton in 1974.

LARKIN' ABOUT Lennon (top), McCartney, Harrison (with Ringo and an extra) and Starr play off-camera. "Studio execs were convinced the Beatles craze wouldn't last past summer," DVD producer Martin Lewis says of the 16-week production schedule.

THE FILM'S frenetic day-in-the-life depiction of the Beatles was inspired by the answer Lennon (with Harrison between takes) gave when asked about the band's earlier visit to Sweden: "It was a car and a room, and a room and a car, and a cheese sandwich."